How to Drink Like a Spy
63 pages
English

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63 pages
English

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Description

Most of us will never live the life of an international spy, but that doesn't mean that we can drink like one!


Just about everyone knows James Bond's classic martini order, "shaken, not stirred", but here you will discover new favorites from beloved novels like those by Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy and big screen blockbusters like the Jason Bourne movies, Argo, Austin Powers, and Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies.


Mixology expert Albert W. A. Schmid provides step-by-step instructions on setting up and stocking a bar worthy of 007 and pouring the drinks to match. Recipes include secret agent favorites like The Lucky Jim versus the Montgomery, Kurrant Affair, Pillow Talk, From Russia with Love, Bossanova, Betsy Flanagan versus the Manhattan, Dark 'n' Stormy, and TNT. How to Drink Like a Spy also includes profiles of the most famous and notorious spies throughout history and a lexicon so you don't blow your cover when ordering your next drink.



Secret Agent Lexicon



Chapter 1 – Drink like a Spy!




Chapter 2 – Cocktail recipes

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Informations

Publié par
Date de parution 09 août 2019
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9781684350926
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0025€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

HOW TO DRINK LIKE A SPY
HOW TO DRINK LIKE A SPY

ALBERT W. A. SCHMID
Foreword by Jon Wiant
This book is a publication of
Red Lightning Books
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
redlightningbooks.com
2019 by Albert W. A. Schmid
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-68435-090-2 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-68435-091-9 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20 19
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO my godmother,
WENDY FREDLAND
CONTENTS
Foreword by Jon Wiant
Acknowledgments
Secret Agent Lexicon

ONE
The Spy Who Came in for a Drink
TWO
Cocktail Recipes
Bibliography
FOREWORD
I SPENT MOST OF MY adult life as an intelligence officer. In the early years, I spent time in Southeast Asia and Central America. Later, fortune favored me with headquarters assignments. For nearly twenty-five of those years, I was a senior intelligence officer. Southeast Asia and Central America gave way to the halls of Washington, DC, varied bureaucracies replacing the field cultures in which I previously operated. This brief gazette of my career is offered merely to define my operational geography of alcohol, drinks, and cocktails. It also explains how I ended up writing the foreword to this exquisite book by Albert Schmid, chef extraordinaire, professor, writer, master of libations, and dear friend for many years. He thought an old spy was just right to introduce How to Drink Like a Spy . I hesitate to add, however, that our paths have never crossed professionally.
This book is essential reading for my profession. Find it in my library next to William Johnson s Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad: How to Be a Counterintelligence Officer . This remains the best book on spy tradecraft-what you need to know if you are going to make it as a spy. It will be on the shelf with Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA s Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda , by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, two gentlemen who know spy gadgets better than James Bond s Q. Quite coincidentally, but maybe not so coincidentally, James Olson s Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying is nearby. Schmid has imaginatively used Jim Olson s Ten Commandments of Counterintelligence as a set of admonitions that link spycraft with mixology. Understand, if not master, these works, and you have a good chance of making it as a spy on the streets. Quite beyond Schmid s practical command of the spy business, his naming of cocktails is brilliant. It is a tribute to those people who populate our spy fiction and, on occasion, inform our spy reality.
What is it about spies and alcohol? It seems to be both the lubricant of our profession and a source for ruination of intelligence officers. Let us get the ruination out of the way. Yes, both real intelligence officers and fictional spies can have a problem with the bottle. The stress of operations, fear of compromise, pressure to recruit, odd hours, wicked travel, lives of deception, whatever, these things can take their toll.
Now, most of us do drink; occasionally, we may even be a bit squiffy or find ourselves three sheets to the wind and come to work the next day with a crushing hangover. Life in the world of foreign affairs can be lubricated, but most of us understand how to enjoy this aspect in moderation. Immoderation is the problem. Some spies give their lives over to alcohol and become alcoholics. The Cambridge Five, the great British spies of the twentieth century, were awash in alcohol. Counterintelligence agents still tell their stories as warnings about the danger of immoderation as a sign of serious security vulnerability. Closer to home, CIA officer Aldrich Ames, one of the most damaging Soviet spies in US history, should have been a poster boy for the security services. He was a binge drinker even before he joined the agency. By mid-career, he was often drunk by noon. He was not alone. As his investigation also revealed, his Russian case officer was also sauced by midday. Confusion reigned when both met clandestinely; nobody could decipher the notes of their drunken ramblings. John le Carr s dissolute British intelligence office Alec Leamas, the antihero of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , was deeply into the bottle. Leamas s drunkenness (or contrived binges) are the occasion for the East German espionage service to recruit the recently fired, perennially drunk ex-case officer.
We could go on in this vein. I am certain that every spy service human resource chief could nominate boozers for our examination. That s not our purpose here other than to make one important observation: boozers suck their alcohol from a bottle, often a bottle in a bag or kept in a desk drawer. They drink to get drunk. They do not just sip cocktails.
Cocktails, on the other hand, are the real lubricants of our profession. Whether enjoyed before a quiet dinner or consumed at a large diplomatic reception or embassy party, they are integral to the whole business of spying. These are the venues where we meet people, cadge introductions, and lay the groundwork for future meetings. Sharing a drink may be the first step in the preparation for eventual seduction or making the first link on a daisy chain of connections. A cocktail invites conversation, and conversation leads to the potential sources who can answer our secret questions. Without this flow of information, we spies have no business. In our training, we learn how to work a reception, practicing elicitation or spotting and assessing. Managing the drink is part of the business, as related by retired MI6 officer Richard Dunn:
One exercise was meeting a former, high-ranking KGB officer. The brief was really straightforward-he s requested a meeting and you ve got to go and find out why he wants to see you. Word of warning: He has already polished off a lot of vodka and you have to match him on that, otherwise there will be a credibility issue. Also, you can t take notes during that meeting because he s really twitchy about that, so you have to memorize, with pinpoint accuracy, anything he says, while at the same time match him on a drinking level. 1
Conversation ensued; drinks were shared. 2 Send the first tour officers out to an embassy reception, and count the business cards they ve collected. It s the first step in the dance. In this post-Cold War world of terrorist threats and nuclear weapons proliferations, some question whether old-fashioned embassy parties are still relevant. In this new world of spying, corporate receptions, academic conferences, science and technology fairs, and the like are just as productive venues for finding potential assets, and receptions with cocktails are just as common. As the music changes, so must the dance but not that much.
It is James Bond who really puts the professional stamp on the cocktail. The whole world knows how Bond has his martini- shaken, not stirred, a mantra recognized in drinking establishments around the globe. The Bond martini may be the defining attribute for his world of espionage.
He orders it first in Casino Royale . Spy historian Ben Macintyre notes that Bond s drink was a weaponized martini : Three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it s ice cold, then add a large thick slice of lemon-peel. 3
Bond may be best associated with the martini, but later in his career, you suspect that he had a gander or two at Professor Schmid s recipes. Macintyre reports that in On Her Majesty s Secret Service , Bond downs no fewer than forty-seven drinks over the course of the book! As you might expect, Bond drinks a lot of wine, very good wine, but the breadth of spirits he consumes is almost encyclopedic:
Calvados, three bourbon with water, four vodka and tonics, two double brandy and ginger ales, two whiskey and soda, three double vodka martinis, two double bourbon on the rocks, at least one glass of neat whiskey, a flask of Enzian schnapps, Marsala wine, the better part of a bottle of fiery Algerian wine (served by M), two more scotch whiskeys, half a pint of I. W. Harper bourbon, a Jack Daniels s Tennessee whisky with water, on the rocks, a bottle of Riquewihr wine, four steins of Franziskaner beer, and a double Steinhager gin. 4
That struck me as a bit excessive, but maybe not that much out of character for a spy. In Washington, I set my own best record for working the circuit by attending an embassy reception or diplomatic dinner party twelve nights in a row! I probably had at least two drinks at each event, perhaps three-or maybe four. I started with a cocktail-my preference was a gin and tonic-and then I switched to wine with dinner or buffet. I had no more than two glasses of wine. Since I was working the crowd, I d stay for brandy or cordials after the meal. Four drinks, twelve events in two weeks, and I had consumed maybe forty-eight drinks. That maybe put me on the Bond standard.
Dinners are better than receptions because you are more apt to be offered a well-prepared cocktail. It was at a t te- -t te at the head of station s residence where I had my first Pimm s Cup, a No. 6. The Brits do have their standards. I stayed with gin and tonic as my generic cocktail, but at ritzier receptions I might slip into using brand names: Oh, I ll have a gin and tonic. Yes, Bruic

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